29 November, 2013

"Too often the online audience separates into a series of rival gangs, each of them patting each other on the back and throwing stink-bombs at the other side. In this environment civility can disappear, with the result that those who do not take an extreme approach in offering their views decide that online forums are not for them." - James Harkin, The Guardian.

We are truly entering a brand new world. Many scientists - young and old - are embracing the power of social media as a venue to interact with the public and discuss research. In many cases, this accessibility has broken down the stereotype that scientists are secretive loners, and has lead to impressive citizen scientist driven projects. However, in equally as many cases, this accessibility has had a serious negative consequence - the phenomena of the online lynch mob...

Soon, achievement will be measured by how early in your
career you attract the attention of an online lynch mob. They are a growing trend in
forums and facebook groups, occur
in every field, and target any level of seniority - from RichardDawkins to high school girls.

For researchers, online lynch mobs can be extraordinarily stressful, as the same genes that makes us attentive to detail and semi-obsessive also leave us socially inept. If I can't even ask the sleeping guy sitting next to me on a plane to please remove his arm from my leg (and let him leave it there for the whole 3hr flight ), how will I ever process a dozen angry online entities making illogical arguments or slinging personal insults?

So, I've done what any scientist would do when faced with a series of difficult decisions - develop a flow chart. I hope this will
help you and encourage you to carry on interacting with the public on social media platforms even when a mob is chasing you down...

EDIT - There's been a very nice discussion on some of the oversights in this blog. Obviously, anytime one faces criticism, you should always take time to re-evaluate. This by no means states that when someone criticizes you, just ignore them. Rather, if there is a professional in your field that you know, who is well educated on the topic, but will only express their criticism through an abusive online gang, rather cut that person out of your life because they are indeed not a professional. Remember, this blog is not about general online criticism, it's about the derogatory and often threatening groups that are growing in popularity.

I also appreciate the concern over the term 'online lynch mob' and how it is overused and evokes the connotation of racially motivated murder. I don't know of any online groups murdering anyone yet, but there are several cases of them organizing and physically injuring people (for a recent example, check out this post on the South African Shark Conservancy group). While 'online lynch mob' may be too harsh to some, I fail to find a term that captures the "target an individual to suppress their voice or end their work via abusive language, personal insults, and/or physical violence" mentality. Suggestions for a better term?

13 October, 2013

DNLee is a professional blogger for Scientific American. She’s a biologist, focused on animal behaviour,
mammology, ecology, and an extremely well-known scientific communicator because
she combines her intelligence with serious wit.
This is why Biology-Online.orgeditor ‘Ofek’ asked
here to write monthly content for their site. After
his request, she asked for more details – how many blogs would they like,
scope, etc – and most importantly, what is their pay-rate? ‘Ofek’ then explained that she would not be
paid and that she should rather look at it as ‘great exposure’. She then thankfully declined his offer – and then
he
called her a whore.

DNLee then wrote an entertaining piece for Scientific
American about this interaction – which is all too familiar to us vaginas in
science. In a shocking twist, Scientific
American removed
her blog, saying:

“Re blog inquiry: @sciam is a publication for discovering science. The post was not appropriate for this area & was therefore removed.”- Mariette DiChristina

This has sparked
a large online debate on gender inequality in science, a
boycott of Scientific American, and a #2 worldwide ranking twitter
campaign #StandingWithDNLee. So yes, Ofek, this has indeed been great
exposure! If you want to read DNLee’s
SciAm post that was removed, you can click
to this blog, one of many that had the foresight to copy her cached original
post. Deleting posts always works, said no one ever and the Scientific
American blog admin…

NOTE: The following is written from my experiences. This is not to say that everyone will have the same experiences in all fields throughout the universe in perpetuity, etc...

Unfortunately, ladies, shark science may be one of the worst fields to have a vagina in. Take the white
shark circus for example – you’re either billed as a butch Shark Man, Ultimate Shark
Guru, White Shark living legend … or a gentile
mermaid that swims with sharks to protect
them. If you refuse to be
type-cast to the above extremes, your life will be difficult. You will either have to grow an extra layer
of fat around your tongue, or you may be
silly enough to speak out.

I started off as a tongue biter since all young women have
to in the beginning. One day, women
scientists will be selected for their ability to confidently debate scientific
topics – even to men! – but we are a
long way off. In my
experience, the young women scientists
who are selected to ‘make it’ are the ones who are seen but not heard… at
least in the beginning.

Once you are ‘established’, or (in my case) work with an extremely rare higher ranking male that does
not consider supporting you a threat to his masculinity, you can begin to speak
publically about issues important to your field. I began to take public stances on white shark
conservation issues about 2 years ago. I
used Uma Therman as an avatar in public forums since men
are more likely to engage with attractive women and the majority of the
ignorant posts in this forum were authored by men. This tactic seemed to work, as these men
interacted with my posts for over a month before banning my account, whereas
they would ban other female authors of similar informative posts in 1 day (after 1 post that contradicted their stance).
I still periodically include relevant
scientific information into white shark debates or correct erroneous
statements, and as a result, I get called a whore ­- or equally insulting sentiment - once a month:

At least read the study, for crying out loud!
In this case, the corrections I recommended to this facebook group were silently
rectified in the end, but I won’t hold my breath for an apology. Also, do not get the impression by this post that bullies are only male – female ones definitely exist too! Such comments have now lost their venom, but
I can understand how other female scientists would be put off from engaging in scientific debates publicly. Remarks such as bitch and whore are not rare, but I encourage you… no, I imploreyou not to be put off. They are just bullies who will target anyone
they render as an easy punching bag to their own low self-esteem.

Like the above case, some of these bullies have successfully
disguised themselves as respectable scientists/conservationists/etc. You will
end up being suckered into working with one of these fools during your career,
but don’t worry, we
have all been there. Learn from
the experience, keep calm and carry on. Also
remember, for every one bully you encounter, there are at least five silent ‘good
guys’ out there. Bullies just make
the most noise (i.e. Ofek above) so
it seems as if the world is full of
them. Cultivate the ‘good guys’ and have the strength to remove yourself from
the bullies you encounter. They will
only – and intentionally! – bring you
down until you say when.

This is why I
encourage more scientists - especially females - to engage the public, if only to drown out the
bullies. Currently, constructive
scientific discussions are limited to the protective walls of conferences and
symposia, when they should be discussed publically, ad libitum. Invite the abuse
of bullies and trolls to learn how to manoeuvre
this brand new world, because the future of online scientific communication
currently stands to be dominated by these loud idiots. You
hold the power to shut them up.

To the prospective woman scientist/shark researcher, I cheer
you on big time. I also want to warn you, it will not be easy. There
will be tough times ahead and you must prepare
yourself (by cultivating ‘good guys’)
for those low moments. Remember, ‘this too shall pass’, both the bad times
and the good.

30 September, 2013

One can always tell when the Guadalupe season is wrapping up, simply by watching The Daily Mail's news feed. The researcher is reported to be from Pelagic Life - and I hope PL is taking the necessary steps in terminating this person from their position immediately. Takethis terrestrial example, where a guide was terminated after the video of him charging a bull elephant was released.

Know that I do not disagree with diving with sharks, and I do agree that at the right times/conditions and with the right animals, you could even dive with a white shark, but your motivations to do so must also be checked, and not everyone's motivations are so benign. I'd go on about this, but Cristina Zenato has already done such a great job here:

"We also have what are called “red flag” motivations. Those are the thrill-seeking, defeat-danger-and-death, peer-pressure kind of motivations. So if we are honest with ourselves, what is it that pushes us outside the cage: A desire to connect? A desire to brag about it? Being able to post a picture of us next to the shark? A desire to know more?"

I am shocked that a researchers at Pelagic Life would have "I want to swim next to a white shark in a speedo so I can get on The Daily Mail" motivations...

13 September, 2013

Looks like the Koel Maru No.88 has gotten itself into hot water off of the Aliwal Shoal MPA. I appreciate IOL's specific listing of what tuna species this vessel is allowed to catch... "yellowfin and bigeye tuna, as well as swordfish and shark."

06 August, 2013

Discovery Channel's Shark Week has done it again by producing, Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives. Evidently (I have not watched it myself) a fake team of fake researchers embark on a fake expedition to find the extinct shark in South Africa. They report that a large shark capsized a boat in April 2013 outside of Hout Bay, South Africa, as part of their evidence of the animal's existence.

This would be funny if a commercial boat hadn't capsized last year outside of Hout Bay, killing two passengers.

This also would be funny if local cage diving operators here in Gansbaai weren't receiving concerned emails about the safety of cage diving after watching the Megalodon show...

Why do we keep giving Shark Week a second chance? When will we as conservationists and operators realize we can not keep supporting/promoting this sharkarrhea? Tell these film crews to fuck off... like they do in Fiji!

Sound elegant science, done like a boss, with female authors leading the publication. Let this please be the beginning of a much needed shift in South African white shark science!

Take away message? Make sure you double check the SST and moon phase before you go out. Is this novel info? For white shark science - yes, but for shore based anglers - no. Nonetheless, it is great to see this kind of information translated into a language academics/government officials are capable of digesting.

So... any bets on how long it takes for a crazy to develop a sea-cooling 'shark barrier'?

12 July, 2013

I love these movies, because I was one of the many raised on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and, as a researcher, I
can relax knowing that the audience is aware of the film's fallacy.This is opposed to most (not all) shark documentaries, which have
literally given me the night sweats as they are chock-a-block full of pseudo
science or (spoiler alert) are
completely faked.Films like Sharknado purposefully take the piss and, considering what passes as a shark documentary now a days, Sharknadocould be doing more good for sharks than
bad - follow me out on this limb...

The film starts out with a scene on an offshore trawler where they are finning sharks. Spoiler Alert: The fishermen get owned by the pissed off sharks. Then, once the sharks are pissed off, they go into shore and start causing havoc while the unnatural hurricane (caused by global warming) hitting Los Angeles makes tornadoes which suck up the water full of sharks. Sharks are then thrown around town killing people (since no one seems to be able to stand up and just walk away from the sharks after they have landed) or start swimming into the flooded streets (based on fact).

After a massive failure of logic (you really expect me to believe that one can dive into a shark's stomach chainsaw first and not cut up the girl that's trapped inside???), the take-away message is: Don't fin sharks and piss them off while simultaneously fucking with the climate, this makes Sharknadoes and no one's got time for that. Is this worse or better than the take away message that killer sharks are your friends and you need sharks to breathe oxygen so save them? They are both based on b.s. and which do you think is more effective?

07 July, 2013

Perhaps this area isn't 'new', but this is the first time white shark presence at Black Rocks/Bird Island has been quantified and published. Unfortunately the paper is not open source, so you will have to ask your academic friends to download a PDF for you. This area highlights yet another aggregation determined by the presence of seals even though it occurs in the warm Agulhas waters, and also shows small shark sizes when compared to our stomping grounds. Yet, I am dubious of the accuracy of surface white shark sizing. Anyone who has been on a cage diving vessel has experienced a good debate of 'hoe lank is dat haai', and the ranges can be startling! Also, as boats/cages get larger, so do shark sizes.

A good example of this is Gansbaai local, Nemo. When all the cage diving operators were working with ~3.0m long cages, Nemo was sized at around 3.0m. Then, when cages suddenly upgraded to 4.0m in length, Nemo suddenly grew to 4.0m in length and the sizing debate began... Here's hoping that someone who has/is/will be using those laser measurement systems on white sharks publishes a nice comparison between observer bias, surface sizing and laser sizing!

As for the DICT, I admit to my soft spot. Gansbaai is a klein dorpie where the omniscient
shark experts, shark saviours, and shark ‘men’ roam the streets/pubs/grocery stores. For one to merely live here you must either avoidthe egosorbecome
one of them. So, I do relate to
the DICT researchers who are based here and also dare to publish research that
questions the Gansbaai white shark paradigm (i.e. there are not 2000 GWSs in the bay). With this environment, it is no wonder that
so many shark researchers in the past dropped everything to escape Gansbaai. I hope the DICT can keep it up even under such hazardous living conditions.

…and for fucks sake fix that infographic! While the Marine Dynamicsbased 'sharkfographic' certainly succeeded in spreading word about the research (already more people have read the PLOS
articlethan there were GWSs in Gansbaai from 2007-2012!), the graphic
has a massive error on the top panel that journalists are only too happy
to report! The
information on the bottom 9/10ths of the infographic is solid, but
the top panel is completely false, not based on the research, and hopefully gets changed. But at this stage, the damage is done…

02 June, 2013

I was paid a visit by Craig, which in the end was a very nice experience and we
agreed to more cups of coffee in the future. He said he felt
personally attacked, however, if
you read the blog again – I explicitly say how much I like him (I still do!) and elude to the fact that
he’s dealing with the
most challenging experience one will face during a career in white shark
research. The blog attacks the
motivation behind rushing to publish a flawed research design on a controversial
topic, the highly inaccurate press release generated by someone, and questions the various hands at play which I am now able to address a bit further
in the blog...

Craig also mentioned that the effects of the blog were immediate/severe and
asked that I take it down. Upon
further investigation on my side, I find this hard to believe. Let me give you some stats:

The front-page push in the local papers probably
reached +-100,000(Figures
estimated based on my experience on what they like to charge for ad-space)

Which is most likely the culprit for the
backlash? Craig agreed that the
press was bad and that the publication was never to test the barrier as a
barrier, like the press says, rather to see if it is possible to manipulate
shark movements using plastic pipes, magnets, and bait. (I won’t dive into this here, rather read this tutorial on
non sequitur argumentsand then read
the publication. I’ll leave the academics/statisticians to the rebuttals).

This press situation is seriously
troubling. If a university is incapable
of producing accurate press releases on their students’ work, then they
should be named/shamed and future
releases from this institution should not be taken seriously. Stellenbosch University's press releaseabout the shark barrier is rife with
inaccuracies, such as:

‘Our structure has already been in the water for eight months and can resist waves of up to seven metres.’

Dead fucking wrong. The structure is in the 'Shark Alley' channel between Dyer Island and Geyser Rock which is protected by the 500m rock breakwall of Geyser Rock. Yes,
Gansbaai does get 7m waves regularly (i.e. Monday), but that structure is in the most
sheltered spot in the bay. Even with this protection, it still came loose! Why lie about this? Surely, if this gaff in the media is entirely
attributed to Stellenbosch Uni. then Craig won’t work with them in the future.

But how did Craig initially get into this hot mess? I wasn’t shocked when he mentioned the
influence of a certain government technician at the beginning of his study, but maybe my government department readers
will be. When Craig was looking for
areas to test the pipes on white sharks, an official at DEA actually
discouraged Craig from contacting the only registered NPO publishing peer-reviewed
white shark research from Gansbaai, and instructed him to only work with a
shark celebrity who runs a commercial dive business.What motivated a government official to discourage an international
researcher from working with a functional NPO but to rather work with a business? Either way this is a hot mess he certainly didn't ask to be thrown into.

So to my 120 readers, I hope you don’t hate on Craig as a person, I don’t. I am also passionate about his cause to
replace shark nets and drumlines which
kill +-30 great white sharks annually within South Africa. However, before one goes running to the press
– whether that was Craig or the
geneticist or another hand – the research must support the elevated claims in the
releases, otherwise you become fodder for shark blogs.

22 May, 2013

You can usually tell if new ‘research’ is a money making
scam by the following criteria:

Research conducted by foreigners

Big PR/marketing campaign

The only supporting research is published in
low-ranking/little known journals

The study gained several high profile sponsors and
then lost them all

Supporting research was done by the people who
own the patents

I’ll let the readers decide if this is what’s happening to the
latest ‘shark deterrent’ system being tested here, in Shark Alley’s home town.

All the latest press releases about SharkSafehave heralded it as the world’s first eco-friendly shark deterrent. The magnetic tubes of plastic mimic kelp which
repels sharks, and there is no bycatch!
The researchshows that sharks did not swim through the plastic tubes that were based in
Shark Alley. Sound too good to be true?

The SharkSafe plastic debris is a single line of tubes in
the corner of the alley. It does not act
as a barrier at all, but merely a bunch of plastic junk that the sharks swim around. Thus, anyone could have achieved
these same ‘results’ by putting, say, wooden poles in Shark Alley or a chain of blow up
dolls or just ropes. Of course the
sharks don’t swim through it, why would they?

How about a hypothetical example…
Lets say I want to create a human barrier, something I can deploy that
will repel humans from specific areas. To
test this, I will go to one of the busiest sidewalks in New York City and put three steel poles in the middle of it.
Indeed, you will see that no humans will cross through the steel, because they
will walk around it. Does this mean
steel poles repel humans? No. Although simplistic, this is actually the
design of the SharkSafe tests in Shark Alley.
Their 'results' are that sharks didn’t swim through the plastic, thus it is a deterrent - make the patents! But actually, it was never tested as a barrier. What this study does unequivocally prove is that sharks are capable of ignoring man-made bullshit no matter how much funding went into building it. How dare they!

What would be a better test in my human example? Say I put a line of these steel poles outside
of a Wal-Mart before a Black Friday sale. The humans are drawn to the area for a reason,
but my barrier lies between them and their goal. As countless Youtube videos show, this
barrier does not work. SharkSafe has not tried a similar study where sharks are motivated to cross through a barrier that they can't simply swim around. If you read the research, they say they used bait to motivate the sharks, but I talk about that at the end of the blog...

So, why would a group of ‘researchers’ push such a massive
PR campaign even though the research actually hasn’t been done? Read between the lines! The plastic debris tubes have been patented
by the University of Stellenbosch. The ‘researchers’
estimate it would cost the City of Cape Town R10 million to deploy a SharkSafe
barrier to protect Muizenberg bathers, which
is what they are pushing for. Clear
now? This appears to be following in the wake of the Shark Shield
gold rush i.e. a PR campaign before legit research, so by the time real
researchers can do the work, the public are already sold on an empty
promise and the 'researchers' have moved on to the next town with their shark cure.

And then I could get petty.
I won’t delve into the politics I suspect are at work in this study as
it involves Shark Defence, the South African Department of Environmental
Affairs, and the Shark ‘Man’ Mike Rutzen. I also don't understand how a geneticistcan be the scientific advisor of what is clearly a behavioural project (unless he's the one holding the patent...). You can expect further blogs for
the SharkSafe Saga as more of this comes to light. I will, however,
delve into my personal observations of this plastic pollution cum shark
deterrent.

I like Craig, I’ve met him once and he seems nice, but I
think he’s suffering from a classic case of someone who hasn’t spent enough
time physically at their study site. Like
every other group of foreign researchers, these guys come out a few times a
year for a few weeks and then go back home, missing out on the rest of the
season’s picture. I do believe if Craig had
spent as much time as I have in Shark Alley looking at those plastic tubes, he
wouldn’t be so quick to push all this press (but that is entirely dependent on
his motivations). I have seen sharks
take seals next to the tubes, I have seen sharks bite off the sardine oil cans they
hung from the tubes to attract sharks to it, I have seen sharks eat the buoys that
were once attached to the rigging. Of course, I cannot prove if any of the SharkSafe team had similar observations, but I don't doubt that if they have, they've left Craig in the dark intentionally.

Also, this
thing got ripped apart by the winter storms even though it was in the most
sheltered area, so how could a SharkSafe deployment ever be logistically feasible? The costs to keep repairing it would be
astronomica-oh snap! It’s the American car
company of shark deterrents- ingenious!

So what’s my answer then?
I have recently learned about a 100% effective way to forecast shark
presence in South Africa and how to eliminate your chances of shark encounter. Step 1: Go to the shore and stick your finger
in the water and then stick this finger in your mouth, if it tastes salty then
there are sharks there. Step 2: If you’re
not prepared to meet one, stay on the beach.

18 May, 2013

The video was shot near Puget Sound, Washington, USA. Of course, this is just one case of someone with an old board and a GoPro (who wanted to make a documentary of this), but shouldn't we not encourage seals to sit on top of stationary surf boards? Does this raise any red flags to anyone else?

Since I have met both these okes (and have
had both of them warn me about the other), I am not surprised to see this
boil over, although I am surprised by
the source. Goes to show how influential
these pesky shark blogs are after all, ney?

Unfortunately, a situation such as this is not rare in the ‘industry’, but is rarely so public. The most challenging experience one will face
during a career in white shark research is being suckered into working with
someone thatis a dick. Like a one-night
stand, they/their projects may look attractive and say all the right things,
but then you wake up and realize that you’re some wrinkly married man’s
mid-life crisis. Seems like when Dr.D
and Fischer woke up next to each other, they were sourly unimpressed. In such cases, you can either scream and defame as much as you can to
anyone who will listen, or you can walk-of-shame
onto the next phase of your life wiser.
I’ll let the readers suss out who is doing what in this case but in the end it doesn’t matter. Both are still going on and achieving their
respective missions, and most importantly, know never to get in bed with each other
again. Yet, when you burn a bridge sometimes an olive branchis extended.

Like most female white shark researchers (who suffer daily exposure to wounded
male egos), I could care less. The results speak for themselves. Props to Dr.D and force-of-nature N.Nasby-Lucas
for submitting to a brand-new open access journal. So, go read it!

As for the PAT v. SPOT rash that just
won’t go away no matter how much peer-reviewed literature you ingest, let
me tell you a crushing story…

Note that most of her dorsal is missing (but is making a come-back) and all of the right pectoral is gone
except a nub. No one is sure how her
fins got sliced off, but we have documented cases where fishing line draped
across a fin worked like a cheese-cutter through the cartilage resulting in
clean cuts like Nemo’s. At the end of
2012, a PAT tag was attached to her to see where such a finless shark goes. Do her damaged fins limit her migratory
patterns? Does she leave Gansbaai at
all? Any clue as to why
this is an important question to answer?

The PAT popped up 2 months ago south of Madagascar, got caught in the south Indian
subgyre and has now stopped pinging.
Thus, the high-definition location/temperature/depth data archived (PAT
= Pop-up Archival Transmitter) in
that tag has been lost. Without the
actual tag we are limited to the summary log that is transmitted when the PAT
surfaces, so we will now know that Nemo was around southern Africa in coldish
waters that got warmer, a fantastically anticlimactic
ending that can’t be published anywhere! The good news is, Nemo has now been
spotted back in her usual haunt near Geyser Rock just in time for winter.

30 March, 2013

First off, thanks to DaShark
and Patric
for the warm welcomes to the shark blogosphere!
Especially Patric’s observation that “…it's about bloody time someone grew a pair of
steaming hot bolas and got on to the Internet to blog about South African shark
diving.” Perhaps my greatest strength lies in my lack of bolas in the
first place. J

When starting this blog, I promised myself to limit posts to South African related
issues, to not criticize shark research and not to have loads of posts about
the cage diving industry. I now break
all of those promises in my second blog… damn!

The work demonstrates how chumming and baiting sharks can affect the fine-scale
spatiotemporal patterns of white sharks within their aggregation areas within
the small window operators are present. No shit. If chumming and
baiting sharks didn’t attract them, you wouldn’t have an industry which is measured in hundred of millions of USD/year would
you?

What is lacking in all of these studies is whether or not these extremely localized fine-scale
spatiotemporal shifts are a bad thing for
sharks. Bruce & Bradford do
point out how woodland caribou (a socially complex, terrestrial, mammal) can suffer from petroleum
exploration activities… which is naturally the best comparison in the
literature to white shark cage diving? Eish…

There are several generally irritating parts of this paper which DaShark
has already highlighted. However, there
are three questions I have about the research specifically, including what
appears to be one epic fail in the methodology.

1) What are the seals doing? Bruce & Bradford highlight how the sharks
are aggregating on the east side of the islands which corresponds to the
corridors seals use to commute to and from the colony. There is no specific mention
of the temporal patterns of seals, however...

By 2010 the peak arrival time of sharks at the island appears to be just after
dawn, a few hours before the operators get there. I don’t think Bruce means to insinuate that
sharks are predicting the arrival of the operators (every WSCG operator wishes this were true!). EDIT: OMFG he does! "Arrival of sharks at 'provisioning' sites in anticipation of vessel arrival has been observed or suggested in a number of studies... but has not previously been demonstrated in white sharks." Rather, this graph is a clear indication that white sharks at the Neptunes are executing the same hunting strategy documented practically everywhere else on Earth (i.e. Kock et al. 2013, Fallows et al. 2012 and De Vos & O’Riain 2010, Klimley Klimley Klimey... the list goes on!!!) and certainly does not provide
any clarity on Bruce & Bradford’s subject of cage diving effects.

2) Shark presence at a VR2 does NOT equate
shark presence at a WSCG operator’s vessel.
We’ve had many sharks pass right under vessels and cut through multiple chum
lines without ever being spotted at the surface by operators. This conundrum could easily be solved by looking at operator logbook data to see how many sharks they observed were tagged. Why Bruce & Bradford utilize logbook data
from operators but do not publish this key aspect is beyond me!

3) The 2010 animals have better tags
with higher battery life and they are using better receivers. When I got to this section;

Transmitters used in the 2001-2003 study were rated for a battery life of approximately 2.0 years and those used in the 2010-2011 study were rated for approximately 6.5 years.” – Bruce & Bradford 2013

I had an epic face-palm. Those are not
the approximate tag battery life expectancies, those are the maximum battery-life expectancies. The cold temperate waters white sharks occur in zap tag battery life, so you are lucky to get more than 6 months of transmissions from those
old (circa 2000) acoustic tags whereas you may get a few years out of the 2009
models. Also they got a nice upgrade in receivers
for the 2010 study, because two of the 2001 receivers were flooded/highly
fouled, one of the receivers was lost in a storm and subsequently that data was
lost…

“Due to a combination of battery failures
and lost stations, there were periods of no coverage from any of the stations
at the North Neptune Islands from 12 February 2002 to 19 March 2002 (36 days),
at the South Neptune’s from 9 February 2002 to 20 March 2002 (37 days) and at
Dangerous Reef from 12 November 2001 to 21 March 2002 (126 days)…” – Bruce
et al. 2005.

If that’s how the receivers fared, how likely is it that all those circa 2000
tags worked perfectly for their maximum
life expectancy of 2 years? It is possible
that the short residency times and lack of diurnal patterns observed with the
2001 animals can be explained by a combination of high tag battery failure and the
multiple lost/battery failed/fouled listening stations. I am concerned that Bruce & Bradford fail
to mention this, and also side-step it by not including an n=individual sharks
value for any of their graphs and only n=detections…

So as much as Bruce (apparently) dislikes the industry, he certainly owes this Marine Biology publication to the controversial
title and the white shark’s “iconic nature”.
Moving forward, will someone please take a look at this question: do the
potential localized spatiotemporal shifts in white shark patterns associated
with cage diving vessels have long-term negative effects on white shark fitness? Consider this white shark which stranded at
Dyer Island that had six Cape fur seals stacked in its stomach. Dyer Island is the epicenter of the Gansbaai cage diving area where eight operators are chumming or berleying, and baiting on a daily multiple trips/day basis! Yet, this omnipresent WSCG effort did not seem to affect this sharks’ appetite for seal. One example, I know that's weak, but this is a blog.

As for my opinion, I do not think cage diving operators have long term negative
effects on the overall fitness of white sharks within an aggregation area, when
done ethically! There are definitely short-term
negatives like the energy sharks lose breaching on rubber seal decoys, and when sharks
get totally fucked up by cages but since we know how well sharks can heal
themselves – even
from a propeller to the spine – I doubt many cases of cage related injuries
have long-term effects. However, we are
still waiting to resight the shark that split its gills open inside a cage last week…

24 March, 2013

Why not kick off the Shark Alley blog with one of the most
controversial videos from Gansbaai?

This video had 110 views on Friday and now at the time of posting has nearly 1 million! It's the Gangnam Style of white shark catastrophes! I can easily tell which company that cage belongs to – but does
it matter? Videos like this impact the
entire industry – from Gansbaai to Guadalupe – so finger pointing is neither
hither nor thither (although maybe someone should recalc those openings –
sheesh!). Amongst the general malarkey,
this incident has brought back one of my favourite failures of logic against
cage diving:

“…but if we were to drag impala heads on
ropes for lions to chase towards game drive vehicles there would be a huge
outcry, why is there not the same with sharks - its baiting pure and simple! “

Big 5 game lodges dig waterholes nearby their premises so that clients can
see wildlife, essentially chumming for lions, hippos, elephants etc. Is this so different? Also, I think it’s a tad naïve to pretend that
the loud landies clients chase around wildlife in aren’t serving as indirect
signals to nearby predators of prey abundance. EDIT: Crazed giraffe attacks vehicle - but don't worry, it was just elevated hormones that caused him to charge the nearest moving vehicle. Perhaps this shark was just trying to mate with the diver? It's disturbing how that is more 'acceptable'...

Think of all the incredible wildlife encounters you have ever
had – was there a lure of some sort involved?
Why do I never see anyone rally against bird-feeders? Perhaps there is
no huge outcry about shark baiting/luring/chumming because there is no research
that support these emotional arguments, in fact, quite the opposite!

The bottom line is, if you want to see wildlife – specifically sharks – within the
narrow-attention span of the tourism world, you have only two options; 1) lure
in your wildlife in areas of their abundance, or 2) keep them captive. I’d rather white sharks were kept wild with
the off-chance of freak accidents like this than the latter. Yes you could also sit for months nearby seal
colonies on the off-chance to see a white shark, but only a rare breed of
humans (called ‘researchers’) have that kind of patience.

So, what happened to this shark to possess it to lunge at the cage? Fuck knows, white shark behaviour is an
imperfect science because each individual animal will react uniquely to stimuli. I have seen a shark fully breach attack kelp,
I have had a shark ram my engine full speed out of no-where, I have had a shark
lunge at a shadow. They are not known
for their complex reasoning skills and their ‘bite first, ask questions later’
method makes them terribly efficient predators.
Before we started filling the ocean with non-organic things (like cages
and seal decoys) this was fool-proof shark logic. However, various media outlets have found the
natural explanation, the shark was most certainly trying to kill the divers inside – and sharks have fangs!

What I find most disturbing about this video is the reaction, or lack-thereof, of
the people/crew. No one attempts to help
the people in the cage (or the shark), and once the shark frees itself
(luckily) the people erupt in awesome hoots and hollers like that’s the best
shit ever. What kind of weird shark
culture is this?

We will keep our eyes out for this shark (i.e. one that has torn out gills - see the blood?) and hope that this calls for stronger cage-related regulations to be passed. The Marine Conservation Science Institute page (and their intelligent commenters) nailed it with this:

18 March, 2013

Welcome to the Shark Alley blog - written by a feisty group from Gansbaai, South Africa - which details all things we deem worth sharing our opinions about. Living in the 'White Shark Capital of the World' - we are most opinionated on things white shark or generally shark related and have first hand accounts of the comical 'white shark circus'. Note that this blog is an opinion blog and that our views are not necessarily shared by any of the conservation/research/social media/ecotourism groups we are associated with - which is what motivated the birth of this independent blog in the first place.

Feedback and comments (at your own risk) on posts are much appreciated, but are moderated entirely for our benefit and are equally subject to witty replies.